This week, I’ve been away on holiday. For some of that time, I’ve been camping!
For me, camping is the perfect time for crafting and crochet. It probably has something to do with many childhood camping trips my mum would pack all sorts of crafting bits for us to do, stick us in the awning and leave us to entertain ourselves. Now when I’m away and sat by the campfire, rather than just sit, I’d like to be keeping my hands busy.
So the current campfire crochet project is a 100% wool blanket for my husband, that I started 3 years ago. There is a story behind the blanket. The yarn is spun 100% wool singles from a UK farm. I bought 3 500g cones of bright orange and black, took it away the summer of 2023 and got about half a meter into a corner 2 corner blanket before we came to the conclusion that there was way too much twist in the single and it was going to be unworkable.
So there it sat in the project bag for 2 years, didn’t want to move forward with it, a reluctance to frog it, unsure what to do. Then two months ago, I bit the bullet. Frogged the entire blanket, skeined up all of the wool and washed it in an attempt to get some of the twist out.
Sadly, this didn’t work, and as you can see from the drying photo even after thwacking it was still really twisty.
So after balling the yarn back up, a plan of action was made, many smaller corner to corner squares, each 7 blocks by 7 in the orange and then attached together by a black border 2 blocks wide.
This brings us to camping and crochet by the campfire. (See we got there in the end!) so you want to crochet by the campfire, but you don’t want to get that item all Smokey? Easy, I highly recommend specific campfire projects. This blanket is being made to use camping, to wrap up warm by the campfire where it will get all Smokey anyway. So my logic is, what does it matter if it gets a bit Smokey now instead of later? Nothing much, my husband absolutely is not going to mind. So corner squares by the campfire it was!
Honestly, there is nothing quite like sitting outside on a summers evening into the night being kept warm by the fire with a little chill music as you work. Chatting to friends, keeping your hand busy as you relax! If camping is your thing, highly recommended! Seriously give it a try!
So where’s the picture of the finished blanket? Yeah, not finished yet! I’m 10.5 squares in on a possible 25 at the moment (might be larger if the wool will stretch further). So until it’s done I’ll leave you with a photo of the fire early evening.
GeekySquidoo 